Drama on my doorstep

I stumbled on a tragedy when I researched the 100-year-old house in Torquay, Devon where I moved with Heather, a former senior marketing manager for Reuters, from Hampshire four years ago. Many newspaper articles were written at the time about this drama in 1933 which took place in the very house where we now live. It’s a psychological drama that involves a young housemaid falsely accused of theft. A lot of research ensued and it resulted in An Unsound Mind, a novella that was released on Amazon last month. Local newspapers are reviewing my book and I will give a speech at the Torquay Library on 20 September about the novella and the need to use libraries, not just the Internet, if you want to research local history. Then there is obviously the global marketing on Amazon of the novella. It follows on the heels of a Nordic noir novel with a satirical edge I wrote about politically correct Sweden today called Kajsa's Last Bullet. Having worked 18 years for Reuters on four continents, I have switched from facts to fiction and enjoy it immensely now as a pensioner. ■